138 Chinese rounded up in Batangas construction site

BATANGAS, Philippines – Agents of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) yesterday invited 138 Chinese nationals for allegedly working at a construction site in Calaca town this province without the required working permit and visa.

BI officer-in-charge Siegfred Mison said the Chinese were rounded up at the project site of the NEPC Power Corp. in Barangay Puting Bato, Calaca after the bureau got reports on their presence there from concerned citizens and agencies.

The Chinese were later brought to the BI’s field office in Batangas City “for interview, verification and inquest proceedings,” Mison said.

Mison said the foreign workers could not show their passports or any travel documents when questioned by BI agents backed up by Calaca policemen.

The BI conducted the operation after the Department of Labor and Employment ordered an investigation as the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) revealed that some 3,000 Chinese nationals were illegally working in construction sites in Batangas and Bataan.

Labor Secretary Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz ordered directors Raymundo Agravante and Zenaida Angara-Campita of Region 3 and 4-A, respectively, to immediately look into the TUCP’s exposé.

Mison said the Chinese nationals would undergo preliminary investigation prior to the possible filing of charges against them for violating the conditions of their stay in the country.

“We will deport them immediately once the Board of Commissioners establishes that they have been working here without a visa,” he said.

Mison said the BI earlier had issued an advisory to companies against the hiring of improperly documented aliens.

“We therefore reiterate our call to companies to ensure that foreign nationals they employ have the necessary permits to work in the Philippines,” he said. 

Lawyer Jose Carlitos Licas, BI’s acting intelligence chief, said his men raided the construction site in Calaca after several days of intensive surveillance.

As of press time, Licas said the foreigners were still being questioned by prosecutors who would later file the appropriate charges before the BI’s Board of Commissioners. – With Evelyn Macairan